Charles Stross is a full time and an award winning science fiction writer of Lovecraftian fantasy and horror. A resident of Edinburgh Scotland, Stross is the author of 6 nominated novels and also the winner of the Hugo Awards for the best Novella. Stross has scooped the award a total of 3 times; in the year 2005, 2010 and 2014. Furthermore he has also won several other awards and a majority of his work has been translated to at least 12 other languages. Stross writes in different styles and sub genres. While only a few of his novels are standalones, a majority of them fall into series.

From the age of 6, Stross always knew that he wanted to be a fiction writer. Despite the fact that he knew he wanted to be a writer, he never really started out until his early teen years. This was after his sister had loaned him her typewriter. During this period, Stross wrote mainly about dungeons and dragons. The stories he came up with during this time did not really please him and he has been trying to forget them. In the year 1986, he made his very first commercial for money sale to Interzone. He also sold several stories in different places especially in the late 1980’s and also in the early 1990’s.

In the year 1998, Stross became a full time fiction writer. Apart from being a writer, Stross is also a trained pharmacist with a degree from a university in London. After earning his degree, Charles Stross opened up a pharmacy shop but as time went by, Charles discovered that the shop was a bad idea. Police and gangsters had raided his shop more than once. He closed the shop and went back to Bradford University and earned a post graduate degree in Computer science.

Upon completion, Stross worked in the tech sector in London before migrating to Edinburgh, Scotland. In Edinburgh, Scotland he secured a job in a web programming consultancy firm. Later on, he had to leave his job after 15 years of abject obscurity. His work of fiction eventually became a runway success and Stross found himself making more cash as a novelist than as a web programmer.

The Atrocity Archives

The MI6 (British Intelligence Service) has its own way of dealing with scholars who get the right formulae’s; they offer them jobs in the Laundry, then later on retire them off into worthless desk jobs. In the Atrocity Archives the author introduces one Bob Howard who is a little bit hyper active for a passive life. After trying time and again, Job lands his first job in the field. This is indeed a relief since Bob had been tied to a desk job for a huge part of his career. Now, he has been presented with an opportunity to deal with demonic possessions and dark forces.

In the Atrocity Archives, there are two tales. The first tale is about Bob. This fist story introduces Bob to the reader and follows him through to his very first assignments along with nervous breakdowns, while a number of administrators keep telling him that he is doing an excellent job. And in deed he has been exceptional in his job. Apart from spotting mathematicians who may have crossed the line, Job’s work also involved saving workshop attendees from being masticated. Along his line of work, Job also gets thrown out of the country for poking his nose where he was not supposed to. By reading this book, we get to know that even the very best agents also experience the very worst of days.

With that being said, despite the fact that this book might somehow look like a horror story it is really a hard science fiction that has a lot of humor in it. This book also has an exceedingly weird Lovecraftian twist with regards to the nature of the world.

The Jennifer Morgue

Just like ‘The Atrocity Archives’, The Jennifer Morgue is based on the premise that all the horrid Lovecraftian horrors are so real and the world government knows about it. Apart from knowing about the Lovecraftian horrors, the government is also directly involved in a highly occult secret intelligence arms race and gathering. With that said, apart from Stross, there are several other authors who have managed to make use of this angle in their books with Tim Powers, Declare being one of the books. However, unlike Powers, Stross has made a point of ensuring that his tongue has been firmly placed in cheek.

In this novel, Stross has managed to combine a James Bond approach to a cold war spy theme. The great thing is that Stross possess the extraordinary ability to satirize a theme or genre without losing sight of what is important or makes the genre work. Charles Stross Lovecraftian novels are exceedingly scary and as a matter of fact more than the works of any other writer who has attempted to have a go at the genre. The convolutedly layered out plots and the counterplots and the cold war style conspiracy all work together beautifully.

It goes without saying that Charles Stross could be indeed a master of the above named genres, if he had decided to take any of them seriously. Nonetheless, all of his books have eventually turned out great. Great humor comes from the hero and narrator, a distrustful hacker ho was forcibly initiated into the occult intelligence service. Additionally, the main character does not fit perfectly in any of the genres that Stross has created especially the Bond type genre/plot. Nonetheless, in the world that Charles Stross has created, the main character fits perfectly.

Conclusion

Over the recent years, Charles Stross has continued to make a name for himself especially due his astonishing Accelerando stories, chronicling post-human and human civilization past and towards the singularity event where technology has become more sentient and near godlike. With that said, if you are intrigued by technology or computers or speak geek or can handle or enjoy twisted and funny writers whose levels of creativity is rather unusual, then the Laundry Files (Series by Charles Stross) is definitely worth the shot.

With the latest book in the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney coming out soon, we wanted to make the very first book in the series our book of the month.

Greaney is an incredible author and if you love the "lone badass" type of books then you will LOVE the Court "Gray Man" Gentry series. Read more about it.

Featured Series

It might seem like overkill, but we're giving The Gray Man series our featured series of the month.

Honestly this is such a great series and we feel not enough people read it so we want to push it. Read more about The Gray Man series and seriously if you haven't read it - start! Amazing thrillers.

Featured Author

Mark Greaney is an incredibly talented author. Not only does he write the Gray Man series however he also writes various Jack Ryan novels. Many feel he is the best writer of them and he truly is a great author. We're happy to award our author of the month to Mark Greaney.

Did You Know…

In the "Never Give Up" category, famous author John Grisham's first novel, A Time To Kill, was rejected by almost 30 different publishers.